


Jester and Nott's Super Awesome Plan That Will Definitely Make Fjord Fall in Love with Jester, Definitely

by blithers



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Awkward Flirting, Crushes, F/M, Gen, Relationship Advice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-21 17:45:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17647043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blithers/pseuds/blithers
Summary: “Nott, how do you get a boy to like you?”





	Jester and Nott's Super Awesome Plan That Will Definitely Make Fjord Fall in Love with Jester, Definitely

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ninj](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ninj/gifts).



> Happy Chocolatebox, Ninj!
> 
> Spoilers for episode 45.
> 
> Thank you to my lovely beta reader, blackestglass. <3

Jester plops her chin down in her hands. “Nott, how do you get a boy to like you?”

Nott looks up from her crossbow, where she’s fixing the the tension on the string. “So the aloof thing didn’t work?”

“I mean… not really, I guess.”

“Have you asked the Traveler?”

Jester scoffs and sits down next to Nott, tucking her skirt neatly underneath her and crossing her ankles. “Of course I have. He said he looked forward to watching me figuring it out.”

“Well. You could always go with the classics, I suppose. You know, flirt a little, show interest in the things that he’s interested in, flash a bit of skin.” Nott shimmies her shoulders, a strangely flirtatious gesture for a goblin. “That sort of thing.”

“Will that work?”

“I’m not the one whose mom is a world-class courtesan. You tell me.”

Jester thinks about her Mama, and the gracious, beautiful way she has, and the way she can wrap men and women around her finger with a single look, and how she’s so pretty she makes everybody fall in love with her, and nods her head. “You might be right. Okay okay okay. I’m going to do it. I'm totally going to do it.”

“Do it, Jester,” Nott says, with the intense look she sometimes gets when they’re planning super awesome things together. “ _Do it_.”

 

-

**1\. Show interest in the things he’s interested in.**

“So,” Jester says, and leans on the railing of the side of the Squall Eater next to Fjord, “Uk’otoa, huh?” Then she whispers Uk’otoa under her breath, and throws her voice a couple feet behind them to whisper the name again.

“What about him?”

“Just… he seems so big and scaly. And powerful. And super into glowing orbs.”

“I suppose,” he says, cautiously.

“And you like that?”

“I don’t know that I’d quite use the word _like_ , but I - respect the power.”

Jester wants badly to explain to Fjord that the Traveler is just as powerful, if not _more_ powerful than his water-serpent-whatever-god, but since she’s showing interest in Fjord’s world, she nods her head instead. “I mean, he gave you a sword that disappears whenever you don’t need it and perpetually drips seawater and doesn’t even get rusty despite the whole seawater thing, so I guess that’s pretty cool, I guess.”

Fjord nods, but he seems really distracted today, and Jester isn’t sure why. Because they definitely sort-of kissed for the first time a couple days ago and that’s almost all Jester can think about - she really wishes she hadn’t been choking on water and drowning at the time, so she could remember it better - but Fjord has been fidgety and weird ever since losing out to Captain Avantika on breaking the seal of the first temple. He keeps shooting furtive little glances at Avantika, who is magnificently ignoring him, working with her crew to bring up the sails to set them on their course to Darktow.

“And you can raise people from the dead and create servant-zombies too, which is definitely powerful and only slightly really creepy. So, thanks to Uk’otoa for that too, right?”

“Mmhmm.”

“I mean, we should all be like, _go, Uk’otoa_! Goooooo Uk’otoa! Right?”

Fjord looks back over at her again from Captain Avantika and shakes his head. “Sorry, were you saying something?”

-

“So?” asks Nott. “How’d it go with lover boy?”

Jester flops herself backwards on her bed. “I think he forgot I was there after a while.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah,” Jester says, glumly.

“Onward to phase two!” Nott says.

 

**2\. Show a little skin.**

Jester saunters up to Fjord, standing at the ship’s wheel. He’s been learning navigation from Captain Avantika and Orly in the past week or so, and spending more time steering the boat lately. His eyes are trained on the horizon, his back straight and strong, looking impossibly handsome in a billowy white shirt and a leather belt slung low across his hips.

They’d glimpsed the first sight of land in days a hour or so ago. Avantika is conferring with Vera at the bow of the boat, both of them pointing occasionally at the thin strip of the land visible on the horizon, discussing navigation landmarks. The purple flag of the Revelry is hoisted on the mainmast as they come into port.

“It’s so hot today,” Jester says, and pushes her left sleeve down, baring some of her shoulder, then nudges Sprinkle around to the back of her neck.

“It is a bit warm,” Fjord agrees, pleasantly.

Jester tosses her hair back from her bare shoulder and fans herself with an open hand. “I’m just burrrrrning up, Fjord.”

Fjord frowns and takes a hand off the wheel to press it up against her forehead. “Are you feeling okay?”

Jester tugs her shift down and leans forward in Fjord’s direction, trying to flash some awesome cleavage in his direction. “I don’t know, Fjord. Maybe you should tell me.”

“You should talk to Caduceus if you have a fever.” Fjord checks back over his shoulder before resuming steering. “He’s good with that kind of stuff.”

Jester straightens back up. “What?”

“I said Caduceus is really good with that kind of -”

“I’m a cleric!” Jester says. “ _I’m_ good with that kind of stuff!”

Fjord glances sideways at her. 

“I know, but Cad is really -“

Jester stomps away down the deck of the Squall Eater, pulling her sleeve back up her shoulder.

-

“And _then_ ,” Jester says, “Fjord implied I wasn’t a good cleric!”

“No!” Nott gasps.

“It’s true.” Jester kicks the foot of her bed. "Ugh!"

“Sounds like it’s time for some real flirting. You know, a little bit of this,” Nott flutters her goblin-y eyelids, “a little bit of that. Use your feminine wiles. Wield them like a goddamn weapon.”

“Like my Mom?”

“ _Definitely_ like your Mom.”

“Okay.” Jester thinks about it. “Like Mama. Okay.”

 

**3\. Flirt a little.**

“Oops!” Jester trills, and trips dramatically on a raised floorboard next to Fjord, launching herself face first into his chest. “Ha ha ha. How clumsy of me.” She pulls herself back up to stand next to Fjord, and lets her hand slide enticingly down his bicep.

“Are you okay, Jester?”

She lowers her voice, seductively. “I am now.” Jester slides her hand up Fjord’s bicep one more time, letting her fingers linger on his skin, so he really, _really_ gets it.

Fjord frowns, then crouches down at stare at the floor, and pokes at the barely-raised board she had pretended to trip over with an accusatory finger.

“That thing’s a safety hazard. Maybe Avantika can have one of her crew members fix that.”

“You don’t have to -”

“It’s not like you to trip over something like that,” Fjord says. “Strange, really.”

“I don’t - “

“I’ll get right on that,” Fjord says firmly, and walks away to ask Orly where Avantika is.

-

“Crank it up,” Nott says intensely, as Jester explains the problem. “Really get in his face and _flirt_ with that dummy.”

 

**4\. (Try to) flirt a lot.**

Avantika’s gone, killed by the Plank King - killed by all of them, really - and Fjord’s been avoiding her.

It’s not an obvious thing. Jester keeps trying to find a couple minutes alone with him, to try implementing Nott’s suggestion to flirt more, to talk about everything that’s been happening, but whenever she looks Fjord is busy with the the ship. He has a thousand concerns as the new captain of the vessel; he speaks with her a few times up on the deck, in view of the crew and Beau and the entire ocean, but whenever she tries to find him below deck, there’s not a glimpse of him anywhere.

So when she throws open the door of Avantika’s old captain’s room to find Fjord seated at the desk, frowning at some sort of ledger, all by himself, _finally_ , Jester can’t help but celebrate.

“Hello, Fjord,” she drawls, and slinks into the room, closing the door behind her with a decisive click. She sucks her stomach in and puts a hand provocatively on one hip, and drapes herself theatrically back against the doorframe.

“Jester,” Fjord mutters in acknowledgement, but he doesn’t look up.

Jester frowns.

“I said, helloooooo, Fjord.”

“Jester,” Fjord asks, his voice low and serious, his forehead still in his hands, “do you think what I’m doing is wrong?”

“What?”

“By going after the second temple. I keep wondering if what everybody else is saying is right. What if I’m making the wrong decision? What if we actually release Uk’otoa?”

“Oh boy,” Jester says, and plops down in the chair in front of the captain’s desk.

Fjord looks up at her for the first time, desperation and guilt in the tired, dark set of his eyes. “What do you think I should do, Jester?”

Jester sighs.

-

“I mean, it sounds like Fjord really needed some advice about not being evil,” Nott says, reasonably.

“I _know_. It’s like I finally get a minute alone with him and he’s all, _why am I a warlock with a super shady patron, am I about to unleash a great evil on the world, what does it all mean_ , blah blah blah.”

Nott sniffs. “Men.”

“Nott,” Jester asks, frowning and fiddling a bit with the edge of her belt, “do you think I should try again? This whole - I mean, things haven’t been going very well when I try to flirt with Fjord, you know?”

Nott starts to answer, hesitates, then says, “I don’t know.”

“Maybe Fjord just doesn’t feel that way about me.”

“Than he’s even more of a dummy than I thought,” Nott says, stoutly, in the same voice she always uses to defend Caleb. “But if it’s not working - maybe you do need a different strategy. Maybe Fjord needs to figure out all his stuff with Uk’otoa. And then, after that, he’ll look around and see a smoking hot blue tiefling and be all like, damn, girl.”

“So you’re saying I should play it cool.”

“I’m saying that if it’s meant to happen, it will happen.” Nott smiles, a little curl of her lips, baring sharp teeth. “I believe in happy endings. Why don’t you just see comes next?”

 

**5\. What comes next.**

“Jester,” Fjord says quietly, “are you okay?”

Jester wants to hide somewhere away from all of them, with their concerned, sympathetic faces and their leaving her behind to die at the hand of an actual, real, totally-about-to-kill-her dragon. She doesn’t want to deal with Fjord’s kind tone of voice, and the way he keeps looking at her like she’s going to start crying or yelling at him or something. She wants to go to bed and spend time talking to the Traveler so bad she can almost taste it.

She forces her voice to be bright. “I’m fine! Totally fine. I’m just… you know, that was a lot. Dragons! It was so crazy, you guys.”

“It was super crazy,” Beau agrees, watching her with the same wary, infuriating kindness as Fjord.

“I’m going to go to bed.” Jester yawns, theatrically loud. “I totally need some sleep after seven days locked in a magic wizard puzzle ball thing.”

Fjord stands up. “I’ll walk you to your room.”

“You don’t have to - “

“I’m going up on deck,” Beau says. “You know how it goes. First mate stuff. I’ll see you in a bit, Jester.”

“Don’t disappear like that on me again,” Yasha says gruffly, and, to Jester’s surprise, drops a kiss on her forehead.

“C’mon,” Fjord says, and holds the door open for Jester.

They walk silently past the galley and mess hall, toward the back of the ship. Fjord seems ill at ease; he makes a couple abortive little gestures with his hands, like he’s about to say something, but can’t find the actual words to start.

When they’re standing awkwardly in front of the door to the room Jester and Beau share, Fjord clears his throat.

“Look, Jester, I’m sorry things happened like that today, with the dragon. You know I would never had left you behind if I’d known, and I - “

Fjord keeps talking, and it’s funny, because this is exactly what she’s wanted for so long - Fjord talking to her, low and serious and earnest, the two of them alone in front of her door, like maybe he’s walking her home from a date and maybe he’ll lean in for a kiss at the end of the night - but Jester can’t bring herself to care right now.

She thinks longingly of her sketchbook in her room. She thinks about how the Traveler and Nott saved her life with the dragon, earlier today.

“Fjord,” she says, cutting him off, and Fjord stops his rambling mid-sentence. “I’m going to bed now. I’m, like, really tired, you know? I want to go to bed.”

“Yes.” Fjord clears his throat. “Yeah, yeah. Of course you want to sleep.” He takes a step back from her. “I’ll see you in the morning, okay?”

Jester smiles, and tries not to make it sad. “Right. Tomorrow morning.”

Fjord takes another step away from her, and his face falls into shadow. The scars on his face are stark, cutting across his features, and for a strange, surreal moment he looks more like a stranger than her dear friend and travelling companion - he could be any man lurking in the darkness, watching her with hard, guarded eyes, for purposes she’ll never understand. “Good night, Jester.”

“Night, Fjord.”

There’s a palpable sense of the distance between them, and then - one, two, three, Fjord steps forward out of the shadows, covering the space separating the two of them. He throws both his arms around her and he pulls her into him hard, and buries his face in her hair, pressing her up against him.

Jester freezes.

Fjord pulls her in a little bit closer, presses his lips quickly against her hair, then steps back away from her.

“Don’t do that again,” he says gruffly, in a strange voice, and leaves, fleeing back into the dark depths of the ship, leaving Jester alone, one hand still on her bedroom door, mouth hanging a bit open in surprise as she watches the space where Fjord had just been.

It takes her a moment to realize why he’d sounded so strange, at the very end.

He’d spoken in his real accent.

-

“Nott,” Jester asks, lulled by the feeling of Nott’s deft fingers moving against her scalp, “how did you learn to braid hair? You’re, like, really good at this.”

Nott’s fingers are careful as she works. “I like children,” she says. “I used to help the young ones in my village, sometimes. Goblin children are raised communally, and sometimes I would help out with them.”

“I never knew goblin kids liked having their hair braided.”

Nott finishes the braid on the left side and starts in on the right, pushing the silver chain looped from the stud on Jester’s right horn back out of the way. “Some of them do.”

“Do you ever miss being home? I know you hate goblins, and it sounds like your tribe was really awful, but it also sounds like some nice things must have happened there, sometimes.”

The dress Jester had worn yesterday is in her lap, singed with burn marks and dragon fire and death. Jester takes a deep breath and touches the edges of her dress, channeling the divinity of the Traveler into herself, willing the fabric to mend. Spellwork begins to ravel and unravel, curling itself with golden light around the charred edges.

“I don’t miss the goblins,” Nott says. “But I do miss - I miss certain things about my home. And there was - there was a man, a halfling man that I knew there. I think I’ve mentioned him. We were friends. I miss him, sometimes.”

“And the children,” Jester says, closing her eyes, concentrating on the spell, feeling the delicate weave and warp of her dress as it mends itself underneath her fingers. “You miss them, right?”

Nott goes very still. “What?”

“The children whose hair you braided? It sounds like you must miss them a little bit sometimes, too.”

“Oh. Yes.” Nott starts braiding Jester’s hair again. “I do miss them, too. Sometimes.”

Jester opens her eyes, and the dress in her laps is whole again, although still smudged with black at the hem. “Sometimes I think about how I don’t want to go home anymore, even though I love Mama so much and I miss her every day and I don’t want to her to be lonely and to have to live all by herself. But there’s also so much I want to see and tell the Traveler about. And, like, you guys are my family now, too." She sighs. “Homes are a really confusing thing.”

Nott continues to braid her hair for a few more moments, in silence, before clearing her throat. “Any luck with Fjord lately?”

“Oh. Well - no, not really, no. But that’s okay, I think. What is meant to happen will happen, right?” Jester brushes at the hem of her mended dress. “He hugged me last night, you know. While he was apologizing for the dragon stuff.”

“Was it a good hug?”

“It was nice.”

“Oooh. Get it, girl.”

Jester laughs, and presses her face into her mended dress, feeling suddenly, overwhelmingly happy to be alive another day, thankful to the Traveler and for Nott, joy bubbling up inside of her and spilling over. “Nott,” she says, “I love you, you know? You saved my life yesterday. Thank you so much. I don’t think I can ever repay you.”

Jester can’t see her face, but Nott ties a short bit of ribbon at the end of Jester’s braid and gives it a fond tug.

“There’s nothing to repay. You know there isn’t.” Nott hesitates, then pats Jester’s cheek gently, like Jester’s mom used to when she was a little kid. “Save my life sometime, in the future. Then we can be even.”

“I love you, Nott,” Jester repeats. “I really do.”

“I know,” Nott says, and stands up. “Now, come on. I can’t wait to spend another awful day on this stupid boat, floating on an ocean of endless water and my own personal nightmares.”

“When you put it like that - ” Jester says, smiling.

“I do,” Nott says, and reaches for Jester’s hand. “Come on. Let’s go find everybody else and finish this thing.”


End file.
